A cooperative sampling scheme for field sampling in dense wireless sensor networks

Field sampling is a significant kind of application of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this application, multiple sensor nodes usually cooperate to sample and estimate the physical signal. A sampling scheme which only considers the sampling process of each sensor node is not suitable for the application. Cooperative sampling with multiple sensor nodes can fulfil the application. For a dense WSN in which more sensor nodes are deployed in an interested field, cooperative sampling scheme is crucial for conserving energy and improving estimation accuracy. In this paper, we present a cooperative sampling scheme for field sampling application. The basis of the scheme is to group the suitable sensor nodes and arrange the sampling time of these groups. The analysis and simulation results show that, under the restriction of the estimation accuracy, the scheme can conserve the energy of the sensor nodes and balance the energy consumption amongst the different groups.